Cybercrime and Online Safety

The UK’s National Data Strategy – Too Much Love?

“We want the UK….to be the best place in the world to start and grow a digital business”. With this ambitious aim, the Government has laid out its National Data Strategy, focusing on unlocking the value of data, establishing a pro-growth data protection regime, and championing international data flows to promote economic development. Already a feted success, the UK’s digital sector now stands behind only the US and China in global venture capital funding and directly employs more than 1.5 million people in London and other major UK cities. Despite its laudable aspiration, however, the Data Strategy signals post-Brexit regulatory intentions which risk inhibiting and choking off the future growth of this successful UK industrial sector.

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Online Harms Regulation – Sanctions But Not Criminal Liability?

In April 2019, the UK published an Online Harms White Paper proposing a broad new statutory duty of care for social media companies and platform providers to tackle widespread concerns about a host of online issues, from terrorist and child sexual abuse content to cyber bullying and trolling. More than 18 months on, BCL’s Greta Barkle asks where have the proposals got to?

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Blockchain: from cryptocurrencies to crypto-KYC

As stricter, more complex, requirements in relation to anti-money laundering are implemented in the EU, distributed ledger technology (“DLT”) might offer an answer to streamlining know your client (“KYC”) processes and reducing the frustration around data sharing. In this article, Ami Amin and John Binns discuss what DLT is, what the current issues with KYC are and how blockchain technology (a type of DLT) could offer a solution to the issues presented by traditional KYC processes.

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